The high plateau of Mongolia,
east of the Altai mountains, is rivaled only by Scandinaviaas a region from
which successive waves of tribesmen have emerged to prey upon more sedentary
neighbors. Mongolia is the original homeland of both Turks and Mongols, two
groups much intermingled in history and loosely related in their languages.
Mongolia is an ideal starting point for the movement of nomadic tribes in search
of new pastures, and for sudden excursions of a more predatory nature. It lies
at the extreme end of an unbroken range of open grasslands, the steppes, which
reach all the way to Europe. Horsemen can move fast along the steppes. South of
this nomadic highway live rich settled communities.
The emergence of the Turks from Mongolia is a gradual and uncharted process.
Each successive wave makes its first appearance in history only when Turkish
tribes or warriors acquire power in some new region, whether they be the Khazars,
the Seljuks or one of many other such groups.
The sudden eruption of the Mongols from their homeland is different. Their
astonishing expansion, spanning the breadth of Asia, can be precisely dated (to
the early years of the 13th century) and can be attributed to the military
genius of one man - born with the name of Temujin, but known now as Genghis
Khan.
No life in history differs so much in its beginning and its end as that of
Temujin, or Genghis Khan. When he is born, in about 1167, the Mongols are only
one among many nomadic tribes competing in the eastern steppes. The boy's
father, chieftain of a small clan, is poisoned when Temujin is eight. The clan
casts out the widow and her young children, who have to forage for their own
food - wild plants, small animals and sometimes even mice.
This almost contemporary account may somewhat romanticize the great man's lowly
origins (turning an occasional mouse into a way of life), the time of his death,
in 1227, Genghis Khan's rule extends from the Caspian to the northern coast of
China.
It is a measure of the task confronting the young Temujin that it takes him the
first twenty-five years of his fighting life to win a position of power among
his own people. Battles within his clan and against other Mongol and neighboring
tribes occupy him until the age of about forty. Then, in 1206, he is acclaimed
as the tribal leader and takes the title Genghis Khan - meaning, approximately,
'all-encompassing chief'.
Genghis Khan's first major campaigns are to the southeast, making incursions
from 1209 into northern China. In 1215 he reaches and captures Beijing. But his
most ambitious expedition, starting in 1219, is to the west.
Samarkand and Bukhara are taken and sacked in 1220. Genghis Khan then moves
south and enters India, but he turns back from this rich prize when he reaches
the Indus. By 1223 his armies have moved round the Caspian and up through the
Caucasus Mountains to plunder cities of the Crimea and southern Russia. This
journey of conquest, unmatched in its speed and extent since the exploits of
Alexander the Great, is based on brilliant psychological warfare.
Several different factors explain the devastating success of Genghis Khan and
his armies, but superior weaponry is not one of them. The traditional riding
skill of the nomads of the steppes plays, as ever, a large part. With stirrups
now a standard part of cavalry equipment, the agility of the horsemen is greater
than ever, in galloping close to the enemy, releasing a hail of arrows and
wheeling away again.
Horsemanship also plays its part in the system of communication which enables
Mongol armies to coordinate their strategies. Riders gallop between
well-equipped staging posts across the steppes, enabling a message to travel
more than 200 miles in a day. Pigeons, too, are trained for the purpose.
But the single most important element is a ruthless use of two psychological
weapons, loyalty and fear. Genghis Khan makes a cunning distinction in his
treatment of nomadic tribesmen and the settled inhabitants of cities and towns.
A warrior from a rival tribe, who battles bravely against Genghis Khan but
loses, will be rewarded for his valor and encouraged to join the Mongols against
the rest of the world. Only cowardice or treachery in an opposing tribe is
punished.
Genghis Khan returns to Mongolia from his long western campaign in 1225. Soon he
is riding to war again, once more against northern China. During a day's
hunting, he falls from his horse. His injuries contribute to his death a little
while later, in 1227.
The family and the Mongol nobility assemble in Mongolia for the quriltai, in
which a new khan is elected. The choice eventually falls, in 1229, on Genghis's
second surviving son, Ogedai - already identified by Genghis Khan as his
preferred heir. Ogedai gives his vast inheritance the status of an empire by
turning his father's modest headquarters at Karakorum into a splendid capital
city.
Karakorum rapidly becomes a place of stature. A Christian friar reaching it in
1253 (William of Rubruquis) finds city walls, a large rectangular palace, brick
houses on the streets, twelve Shamanist shrines, two mosques and a Nestorian
Christian church.
Genghis Khan spent his life in ceaseless campaigning, but his son Ogedai prefers
to direct operations from his new capital city. Under his central control,
Mongol armies make further inroads into China. They overwhelm Korea. And they
have startling successes in the west.
In 1235 Ogedai instructs his nephew Batu to extend his part of the family
inheritance into Europe. Genghis Khan has entrusted the western extreme of his
empire to his eldest son, Juchi, who dies shortly before himself in 1227.
Juchi's son Batu remains in control of this region, and in 1236 he moves
northwards into Russia. In 1237 Batu and his armies overwhelm the tribes around
the lower reaches of the Volga. Russia, consisting of many small principalities
ill-equipped for any concerted effort, lies open before them.
Zolotaya Orda, or the Golden Horde, is the name given by Russians to the
invading Mongols who sweep through the country from 1237 and who subsequently
dominate the region, for nearly two centuries, from their encampments on the
lower reaches of the Volga. The name is traditionally said to derive from a
golden tent used by the horde's leader, Batu Khan.
Most of the Russian cities of any note are ravaged by the Mongols in the two
years between their sacking of Moscow (1238) and of Kiev (1240). But the horde
then moves south.
One army from the Mongol horde advances into Poland in 1241. They defeat a joint
force of German and Polish knights at Legnica in April. In the same month
another Mongol army wins a crushing victory over the Hungarians at Mohi. The
tribesmen spend that summer on the plains of Hungary, grasslands similar to
their own steppes. Eastern Europe is ill-equipped to dislodge these fierce
nomads. But a faraway event resolves the issue.
News comes in December that the great khan, Ogedai, has died in Karakorum. The
leader of the horde, Batu, and other Mongol nobles must attend the quriltai
which will elect his successor. Batu withdraws from Hungary, returning the horde
to its grasslands around the Volga.
From this region the leaders of the Golden Horde control the petty princes of
much of Russia - largely by the simple device of treating them as glorified tax
collectors. The princes are given free rein in their own territories as long as
they deliver sufficient tribute.
Batu makes his capital from 1243 at a place on the Volga named after him - Sarai
Batu, the 'encampment' of Batu. His brother Berke, succeeding to the leadership
in 1255, adopts Islam as the religion of the horde. His capital, Sarai Berke (to
the east of modern Volgograd), becomes a thriving city of mosques and public
baths, in the central Asian tradition, with some 600,000 inhabitants. It lasts
until 1395, when it is destroyed by Timur.